


Hands down, I'm too proud for love

by illuminatedcities



Category: Lost, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Biting, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4021411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illuminatedcities/pseuds/illuminatedcities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He’s cruel, calculating, heartless: There’s a part of her that wants to break open his ribcage with her hands and <i>check</i>."</p><p>In which Root meets Ben Linus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands down, I'm too proud for love

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of a prompt at the May Prompt Fest, teaanddenial asked for a Lost/POI crossover with Ben Linus & Root crossing paths. 
> 
> (This is all your fault, Daisy. I BLAME YOU FOR THIS 300% JUST SO YOU KNOW.)
> 
> Title from Lykke Li, “Little Bit”.

Root wakes up on a steel examination table.

  
Her hands aren’t bound, which is good, but her head hurts and there’s a strange taste in her mouth - _was there something in her drink?_

  
The wall next to her is covered in cages with suspicious cats blinking at her in the half darkness. Behind the steel door she can hear the faraway sound of dogs barking.

  
She evaluates the situation: She’s in a veterinarian’s practice, she has retrograde amnesia starting from last night, she doesn’t have her weapons with her. Off to a good start.

  
The lights are all off except for where the sunlight light comes in through the cracks in the shutters: She must have been out cold for a few hours, then.

  
There is a steel tray with instruments next to her, scissors and tweezers and gauze, a large cupboard next to the door stacked with paper cartons.

  
There is movement next to her.

  
Root grabs a pair of scissors from the tray and aims for the guy’s throat, but he is not an amateur:

  
He twists her arm until she gasps and drops the weapon. The scissors clatter to the floor and Root aims a kick at him that he blocks effortlessly, pressing down with his knee so that he’s half on top of her, holding her down against the cold metal in her back.

  
This close, the light from the window hits him and Root can see more details:

  
His black curls are falling into his face, half-hiding his eyes.

  
His reflexes are too quick for him to be a regular bodyguard or some ex-cop, she thinks, this isn’t just strength, it’s _precision_.

  
Root is snarling and fighting against his grip.

  
Military, Iraqi soldier, most likely. He was interrogated at some point, judging by the scars and burns covering his skin.

  
“Miss Root, I’ll have to ask you not to do that,” a calm voice says from somewhere in the shadows.

  
The lights go on with a neon flicker, the whole room suddenly too bright, all polished steel and tile.

  
Root blinks, disoriented.

  
The soldier has eased his hold and let go of her hands, showing his open palms to indicate that he isn’t dangerous, a gesture only shown by the genuinely harmless and the _fiercely_ dangerous.

  
Root bets that he is the latter.

  
She manages a nasty kick against his shin when he is moving away from her, and he doesn’t quite manage to bite down on his grunt of pain.

  
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will,” the soldier says.

  
His eyes are oddly gentle.

  
“Sayid, is that a way to treat a guest?” The man behind her says, and Root turns around.

  
He is smaller than the soldier, clear blue eyes and a thoughtful expression on his face. Intelligent. He looks like she could snap him in half without breaking a sweat.

  
“It’s “Root”, not “Miss Root”. If this is a kidnapping, you’ll be extremely sorry, and if you’re trying to hire me, you’ll find I do not work for people who drug me and hold me down.”

  
The expression on the man’s face is pure _delight_.

  
“This is not a _kidnapping_ , don’t be silly,” he says, waving it off with a pleasant smile that is a little off at the edges.

  
Root feels cold, suddenly, and it has nothing to do with the polished steel beneath her.

  
“I am in fact looking to hire you, Root. My name is Ben.”

  
He holds out a hand for her to shake: He wears gloves, soft-looking black leather.

  
Root stares down at it, wondering if she can manage to get close enough to scratch the benign smile off his face before soldier boy has her pinned against the table again.

  
Ben keeps his hand outstretched for another three seconds, then he drops it and lets his arms fall to his sides. He looks untroubled.

  
“I need a computer expert to trace down a number of people, and you have an excellent reputation for being competent, and, well - _ruthless_.”

  
The word sounds like a caress from his mouth.

  
“Do you bring an attack dog to every one of your job interviews?” Root asks.

  
“None taken,” the soldier mutters from somewhere in the shadows.

  
“My friend Sayid is just here to make sure that you don’t kill me before I get to explain my offer,” Ben says calmly, walking to a desk in the corner.

  
Root can see her taser, two different knives, a gun.

  
He picks up the taser, presses the button and lets the electricity crackle into the air for a moment.

  
Root wonders if it’s supposed to be a threat, a taste of what is to come for her, but Ben only puts it back down, ignoring the gun and knives completely.

  
Root jumps off the table. Sayid doesn’t flinch, but his eyes keep following her.

  
She throws her hair back when she passes him, mock-enticingly. Root runs her fingers over the edge of the examination table when she walks around it, fingernails painted midnight black.

  
“Do I get to kill you _after_?” She asks.

  
“Oh, I had doubts if you were the right person for the job, but now I can tell that we will get along just fine,” Ben says, smirking.

  
He comes closer as if she couldn’t break his neck in a second.

  
“Actually, your task would be to locate the individuals in question, so that we can kill them.”

  
Ben waves his hand around a little, like he is adding necessary but boring information.

  
“I mean, Sayid will kill them, and I will watch, but still. You get my point.”

  
Root considers him.

  
“So, you like to watch, huh?” She says.

  
His smile is pure cruelty, and Root can’t decide if she wants to see his own blood on his hands or someone else’s.

 

\--

 

Ben is doing well for someone who looks so fragile: Root can see the body of one of his attackers curled up of the floor, unconscious or dead.

  
Ben is currently breaking the ribs of the other guy with what looks like an expandable baton, one sharp blow to the side and the satisfying sound of shattering bones.

  
The man grunts at the impact, but Ben apparently didn’t account for the Beretta M9 that he’s carrying on his back, tucked into his pants: He reaches for it just as Root unlatches the safety on her own gun and takes the man down with one clean shot.

  
Ben looks up at her.

  
“Well, that was unpleasant,” he says, folding away the baton.

  
He doesn’t look particularly startled for someone who was just involved in a fight with two trained killers.

  
“Did you and Sayid encounter any difficulties?”

  
“You’re welcome, Ben,” Root says pleasantly, holstering her own gun.

  
Ben gives her a half-smile that’s just an amused curl to his mouth, a deepening of the lines around his eyes.

  
“If they had killed me, you wouldn’t get your money, so saving my life is in your best interest.”

  
Root makes a step forward.

  
She has watched him cautiously in the last weeks, his razor-edge mind and the way he uses words like chess pieces.

  
The way he draws people in and then _destroys_ them.

  
“Maybe I like you,” she says, straightening his collar where one of the buttons was ripped off during the fight, exposing his bare chest underneath.

  
“Certainly not,” Ben says.

  
He looks straight back at her like he isn’t afraid, and it’s _frustrating_ , how little she can rattle him even after everything he’s seen her do.

  
She puts a hand on his cheek, his skin even paler against the shiny black of her nails.

  
“You sound so certain about that,” Root says, close enough that she can see the delicate lashes on his eyelids.

  
“We should get out of here,” Sayid says from the doorway.

  
Ben’s mouth twitches in something that is not a smile at all, and he walks around her to follow Sayid out of the door, twirling the baton in his hand, humming to himself.

 

\--

 

When she picks the lock on his hotel room door and struts in like she belongs there, he doesn’t even turn around.

  
Ben is sitting at a desk overlooking the skyline, his back turned to her like she couldn’t kill him four different ways before he even got to his feet.

  
He wears glasses with perfectly round frames, Root can see his reflection in the large window, bent over a book, fingers carefully splayed over the pages.

  
The lights of the city are sparkling below them in the dark.

  
“Hello, Root,” Ben says.

  
There are two glasses on the coffee table, next to them a bottle of wine, already opened.

  
Ben stands up and turns around to face her.

  
He looks so ordinary in slacks and shirt, so very unlike the man who stitched Sayid up after an assassination with calm hands, asking him how he disposed of the body.

  
Ben takes off his glasses and places them on the desk.

  
“I hope you like red wine,” he says, nodding his head in the direction of the bottle.

  
He’s cruel, calculating, heartless:

  
There’s a part of her that wants to break open his ribcage with her hands and _check_.

  
“How presumptuous of you,” Root says, but her hands are itching already.

  
“You’re here, aren’t you,” Ben says softly, and that does it.

  
Root steps forward to either kiss or hurt him, and ends up doing a bit of both:  
She grabs him hungrily, mouth pressed against his and her hands in his neck, nails sinking into the soft flesh of his shoulders, and how is he even _real_ , with his lies and secrets and the amused slant of his mouth?

  
Ben kisses her back, his hands on her hips gripping a little too tightly, and it’s _good_ , to know that he probably wants to put his hands around her neck a little, too.

  
Root lets her fingers trail over his neck, curl her nails against the sensitive skin there, enjoying the way he shivers at the contact.

  
He pulls her even closer until their hips are pressed together, kissing the same way he talks: Smart and challenging and always a step ahead.

  
She pulls his hair, sharply, and he lets out a gasp of surprise, so she does it again, and this time his hips buck against her.

  
Root puts her hands on his chest, his breath gratifyingly quick, pushing just the slightest bit, watches him take small steps back until he hits the edge of the mattress with the back of his knees.

  
“I don’t care for wine,” she says, and he hooks his thumbs beneath the fabric of her leather jacket and pulls it down her arms.

  
Root wonders if she can get him to stay still beneath her or if she will have to find something to tie him up with when he hooks a leg around hers and makes her lose her balance, her arms still trapped in the sleeves of her jacket.

  
She falls onto the sheets, her arms effectively bound, trapped behind her back.

  
The _bastard_.

  
Ben smiles, looking down at her.

  
“Your bedside manner could use some work,” he suggests, blue eyes sparkling with amusement.

  
He gets down onto the bed, keeping his balance with his hands on the mattress, and Root gets her shin up and between his legs where he is kneeling over her.

  
Ben pulls in a sharp breath, rubbing up against her before he can stop himself.

  
Root smiles, slipping off her boots with her ankles and pulling her leg up further so she can run her foot over the erection in his pants, enjoying the way his eyelids flutter.

  
“How long has it been, Ben?”

  
She bares her teeth at him.

  
His intimidating stare is a lot less intimidating with him leaning over her all flushed and wound up, his thighs quivering a little where he keeps from pushing against her.

  
Ben moves up her body so he can lean in and kiss her again, deep and filthy.

  
It’s uncomfortable, the way her arms are bent behind her back, pins and needles in her hands and an odd feeling of being trapped even when she could free herself in a moment, and even stranger:  
The way she _likes_ it, his solid weight on top of her, pressing her down, running his hands over her body with no way for her to touch him.

  
“Oh, it has been a while, but I have excellent self-restraint,” Ben says against her lips, leaning down to nip at her neck.

  
Root manages to free her right hand from the sleeve, and it’s only at the sound of his zipper opening that Ben stops and looks at her.

  
She looks straight into his eyes in just the moment she manages to get a hand into his pants, curling her palm around his cock.

  
Root can watch his eyes turn unfocused, the grin sliding off his his slack, surprised mouth.

  
“Do you now,” she asks, deceptively gentle.

  
His eyes slide shut and he moans at the feeling of skin on skin where she cups him firm and unrelenting, and this time he lets himself push against her, hips thrusting forward into her grip.

  
Ben leans down to lick into her mouth again, sighing against her lips.

  
Her wrist is bent at an awkward angle but she keeps up touching him, a little rough and a bit too fast, and after a while he catches her hand.

  
“There’s no way I will last if you keep it up like that,” he says softly:

  
The same tone he uses before he pulls a gun on someone.

  
“You should keep yourself occupied, then,” Root says, freeing her other arm from her jacket and tossing it aside.

  
She reaches between them to unbutton her pants and pull them down along with her underwear, and because he’s a _genius_ he gets the hint and slides down her body where she spreads her legs for him.

  
He’s maddeningly good at this, licking and fingering her until she’s nearly there, only to withdraw, working around her clit in frustrating circles, and her intentions to keep the upper hand are quickly replaced by an intense desire to get off, to get that pretty mouth where she wants it.

  
Root grabs his hair and shoves his face against her, keeping him in just the right position.

  
He _lets her_ , tongue darting out obediently to curl against her until she’s shuddering against him.

  
After, while she can still feel the aftershocks running through her body like electricity, she pulls him up to her, tasting herself on his lips, his chin slick and wet.

  
Ben opens a drawer with one hand to retrieve a condom, without breaking the kiss, getting his pants all the way off.

  
Root uses the moment to flip them, ending up on top, pinning his wrists with her hands.

  
She lowers herself onto his cock and leans down to bite his neck, and Ben _whines_ at the feeling of her teeth sinking into his throat, the muscles of his shoulder.

  
Root curls her hips lazily against him, going as slow as she can stand it, and Ben has a desperate grip on her hips.

  
“You’re awfully quiet,” Root says, leaning back a little so she can arch her back and move her hips in a slow circle, and Ben’s fingers dig into her skin in a way that will leave perfect purple marks on her.

  
“Everything I could come up with would be profanity at this point,” Ben says, his voice coming out strained, and she leans down to leave marks over his collarbones and shoulders when he gets a leg beneath hers and flips her on her back, his hips pushing into her in one sweet thrust that has her curling her toes.

  
He’s setting the pace now, fast and hard and _perfect_ , and Root scratches her nails down his back, leaving red lines all over his skin.

  
When she comes, she bites down viciously, leaving a half-moon of teeth marks on his shoulder, her legs wrapped around his thighs.

  
Ben shudders above her, the rhythm of his hips faltering when his own orgasm hits him, the only sound he makes a surprised little gasp.

  
He rolls off her, wincing when his tender back hits the sheets.

  
Root wonders if she drew blood, how long he will carry the souvenir of her nails on his skin with him: If he will touch the bruises and think of her.

  
She retrieves her underwear and pants from the mess of sheets and puts them on.

  
Ben blinks at her.

  
“Are you leaving?”

  
“Why, did you want to cuddle?” Root asks, making sure that the smile on her face is adequately cruel.

  
She crawls down to the edge of the bed to pick her boots up from the floor and put them on.

  
Ben pulls the covers over himself, then he leans back and closes his eyes.

  
“I was just thinking about something I might try tomorrow, before breakfast.”

  
She can feel the bruises his hands left on her thighs burning on her skin.

  
“Eating a grapefruit?” Root asks, sounding unimpressed, but she is turning towards him:

  
A moth drawn to a flame.

  
“Actually,” Ben says, opening his eyes to direct his intense gaze at her, “I was wondering how many times I could make you come in succession before you’ll beg me to stop.”

  
She smiles despite herself.

  
“I don’t _beg_ ,” she says, but she slips out of her boots anyway.

  
Ben leans back against the pillows again, watching her undress.

  
“We’ll see about that.”

 

 

\-- fin

 


End file.
